Kroo is a digital bank that launched in December 2022 and offers current accounts under a “2&2” model that returns interest to customers and plants trees for new sign-ups. The bank has opened 145k current accounts and holds £765M in customer deposits to date. Since launch customers have earned £15.6M in interest, and Kroo says it acquires customers at a cost of £38. Revenue is expected to come from transaction fees and net interest margin on deposits and loans. Kroo aims to plant 1 million trees by the end of 2024 and to reach the maximum UK crowdfunding allowance to scale against bigger banks. The product has been well received—Kroo is rated excellent on Trustpilot and received public praise from consumer commentator Martin Lewis. Kroo is a newly authorised UK mobile-only bank whose current product is a prepaid debit card and companion app that lets customers create groups, track spending, and split and pay bills. The company has grown organically to 23,000 prepaid cardholders and processes over 120,000 monthly transactions on its platform. Kroo plans to gradually close its prepaid card scheme and migrate users to a new Kroo current account, with credit products planned for a later stage. The firm says the recent funding will support the market launch of its current account, development of a lending proposition, and scaling the business. Kroo positions itself as a bank with a social conscience, running a customer tree-planting referral scheme (launched June 2021), maintaining a board-level social conscience committee, and pledging to donate a percentage of profits to social causes. Financially, Kroo has now raised over £56m in equity funding since launch across five series of investment rounds. Launched in February 2019 and based in London, Kroo provides a prepaid debit card and a mobile app that helps users track personal and social finances, create payment groups, split bills, and pay friends. The company emphasizes social impact, pledging a percentage of profits to social causes and running a tree-planting referral scheme that plants 20 trees per referral. CEO Andrea de Gottardo, who joined Kroo as chief risk officer in 2018, leads the team as it develops toward full banking capabilities. Kroo has previously raised seed funding for its prepaid card service. The firm is pursuing a full banking license targeted for early 2022 as it expands its product set and regulatory status. B-Social operates a social finance app and issues a debit Mastercard that lets users make purchases, share and track expenses, and simplify peer-to-peer money interactions. The company says it is on a mission to improve the relationship people have with money by connecting finances to users' social worlds. B-Social has more than 8,500 customers who have spent over £1 million on B-Social cards and have shared more than 36,000 expenses. It launched in February last year and is preparing to rebrand to the name "Kroo" next month. The firm reports it has significantly progressed the pre-application stage for a U.K. banking licence and expects to submit the full banking application in Q2 2020. To date B-Social has raised a total of £13.25 million as it continues the journey to become a fully licensed bank. B-Social currently offers a "social finance" app and a beta debit Mastercard that enable control over everyday spending, expenditure tracking, group bill splitting and recording settlements. The app flags purchases as expenses on behalf of a group and lets members continuously see who is owed how much and settle payments within the app. It is in limited beta with testers drawn from employees, investors, friends and family, and plans a wider U.K. launch in February next year. The company has raised £3.2M in seed-round funding from undisclosed high-net-worth individuals. B-Social says the funding is the first step toward becoming a fully licensed bank that reimagines banking around everyday social interactions and to build a bank from scratch through a social lens. CEO Nazim Valimahomed framed the product as a way to reduce anxiety and friction around social finances while targeting customers seeking a more social digital banking experience versus incumbents and challengers.

Total raised

$73M

Funding rounds

5

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Nov 2023